First Few Desperate Hours
by starbuck22
Summary: Starbuck's return to the fleet. Post season 3.
1. Chapter 1

**First Few Desperate Hours**

_The blinking, coming in an__d out of his view.__ The DRADIS could__n't track the way to Earth__, the key to their salvation. __Couldn't find him…or her.__ Was it possible? There wa__s only one name, chanting it under his breath softly, afraid to break the spell…_

He's moving towards her quickly, power radiating from every line of him. Even through their shock and confusion the crew, the other pilots, everyone moves out of his way. They have to, because he can't see them. He would walk through them, throw them to the ground, rip them apart without even noticing he's doing it…without even noticing they were there. He's like a bull, unstoppable in his need to reach her.

He can see her, climbing down the ladder. The crew who dragged it to her ship, who set it against the cockpit, have since backed away. Their eyes are fixed, unwavering, on the nameplate she slides past as she climbs down the steps. It's not her Viper, it's not a ship they recognize. Still, tacked to the side they see the familiar declaration. Cpt. Kara Thrace. And underneath the one name that rattles them all to the very core. _Starbuck._

Her eyes find his and she can see him raging towards her. There is no other word for it. Nothing else to describe the violence of his movements. She seems unsure of what he'll do when he reaches her, if he'll kiss her or try to kill her or deck her or scream at her or cry. Still, she remains calm, waiting for whatever he decides to do, knowing it will be right between them…whatever it is.

He grabs her and crushes her body against his. He doesn't even stop to look at her. He wraps his arms around her and shuts his eyes tight against her shoulder. He can feel her hands on his back, so solid against him. She feels him shudder, and wonders if he'll break.

"We thought you were dead." She hears him whisper into her ear, his breath hot against her. "I _saw_ you die."

Her grip on him tightens when she hears him say those words, knowing what it means. She wants to cry in pain, in relief, in the steady feel of him against her again.

He pulls away and takes a step back. She waits for him to say something, to do something. It always had to be him that made the first move now, didn't it? Well, after everything she owed him that much.

He can see the slight spark of surprise behind her eyes when he reaches his hand gently to touch her cheek. It's not seductive or joyful, it's just so _familiar_. Affection. It hasn't always been like this between them, but she knows it will be from now on. She smiles at him slightly.

It's like an electric shock, the difference contact can make. His rough, soft hands on her, then their angry arms around hers, dragging her back. All betrayal and fury and suspicion. She can see the horror in his eyes, then realization, then rage. She sees him tearing at the men around them, like a wild animal. He's calling out to her, but he doesn't have any authority anymore.

Finally, one of the Marines gets him on the ground. She can't see him anymore. The pain in his gut is sharp as it connects with one of the Marine's feet. He can't see her anymore.

_She looked over at him as he slid__ n__ext to her for a moment. He could __feel the hopelessnes__s creeping up on her. He wondered if there was anything he could __say. _Feeling sorry for me?_Never._Kara, everyone gets rattled. Even the best._ She took __a moment t__o say it; it felt__ like dying. _I'm not going back out there. I don't trust myself._ He res__ponded __without a pause, almost. _So, trust me

They're silent for a long time. She looks at him calmly, waiting for him to make the first move. There is nothing unsure about the way she's watching him. He's so full of emotion that he can barely breathe, barely look at her.

"So that's it." His voice is gruff and weak and he finally meets her eyes. She blinks back at him, waiting for the rest, unwilling to ask the question. "You're a Cylon."

"No." She replies. The word is so simple yet it feels weighted, like she has been waiting her whole life to say it. Her whole life, that ended a month ago.

"How could you do this to me?" He's not going to cry.

"I didn't do anything to you, even now. You just can't see the truth yet." She smiles at him kindly. Eerily calm still.

"You're not Kara." It's not a question, and it's the truth.

Without warning she starts to laugh. It's the same laugh. It's her laugh. It's jubilant and patronizing and it hurts him more deeply than he ever thought it could. He can feel the tears stinging at his eyes. He won't let them fall.

"What's so funny?" He finally manages to ask. Anything to make her stop smiling like that. _That_ smile.

"Everything." She states. "This…my life."

He watches her, horrified, for several moments as he begins to understand why she's laughing. Or maybe he only thinks he understands.

The Kara he knew, all the facets of who she was…each one was different than the girl before him now. He can see for a moment how each one lead her, in a straight unwavering line, to this place and nowhere else. He can see for a moment her life from a new angle, how she always seemed to hide from herself. All the time she spent having sex and getting too drunk to walk, all that time lying and treating boys like dirt, all that time hating herself. He understands why the only thing she can do now is to laugh. She _has to_ laugh.

She notices the change in his face. Maybe there is hope for him, for her, for them. Maybe he will find it within himself to see the truth, and to forgive her, even though she knows that he never will. Still, in this moment he looks like he can see some of it. She jumps at the chance…because she always has.

"You're in the air, everything is suddenly clear. The atmosphere can only get heavier the farther down you go. When the water hits the glass around you it cuts off all the other sound. What can you hear?" Her voice is haunting, but it can't touch her eyes.

His gaze snaps to her face. He whispers, almost against his will, "Nothing but the rain."

Just like that the roles are reversed. All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again. The players have changed and the story's the same. Can he see it as clearly as she can now?

"I saw my life from the eye of a storm that day." She tells him softly. "And where it led was here, and I knew it all along."

She can see him fading, hardening against her words again. _Knew it all along_. The taste of betrayal is there again. He turns around and walks away, towards the door.

"Admiral." She calls after him.

He has to turn around. There's really no choice. Not when it's her voice, not when she's calling out to him. He's pretty sure it is something he will never overcome. He looks at her through the bars. He keeps his face impassive and cold.

"I can get us there...I know where it is."

There's no need to clarify what she's talking about.

He closes the hatch with a slam behind him. She feels him going.

I'll fly your wing._ She broke __out in laughter and sweat. _The CAG, fly my number two?_ And it had been so long since she __bought the two of them that the look in__ his eyes at that moment took her__ b__reath away. _Whatever it takes._ It was nothing he hadn__'t said a million times befor__e; that didn't make it less. It made it more. His words were trajectory. They were silent, looking, he tried without talking, __she__ took it and got__ stronger. Stro__ng enough to say goodbye: this wa__s fate unfolding._

"Admiral send you to kill me?" She smiles at him, almost like she's pleased to see him. Maybe she is.

He blinks at her with his one eye and doesn't say anything for several seconds. He's looking at her like he's trying to see inside her. For the first time since she came back, she looks unsure…uncomfortable.

"You're a Cylon." He states. Same as the Admiral, not a question.

She shakes her head, not even saying the word. Then she sees the difference. He believes her. He understands completely, without even hesitating. He seems sad. Heartbroken.

"You." She breathes. This is more like a question now, but not quite. It's a question that's already been answered.

"I don't know who I am anymore. I don't know what to do." His voice is defeated, yet she can hear the resolve beneath it, begging to come out. That part of him that always brought him back to the CIC when he thought he could never return. The shame, the hurt, all the pain of the things he had done, and the things that had been done to him, so close to defeating him every time. This was one time where he didn't look like he could escape from the darkness.

"You'll do whatever you have to…just like you always have." She tells him, her voice confident. She's surprised, but has the grace not to let it show. She hadn't known who he was - what he was - before this moment. "We write our own destiny."

He scoffs at this. The ragged, deep, broken laugh of a man in pain. Even if that was true, he knew that just because you write your own destiny doesn't mean you can't see it coming, like a huge wave on the ocean. Everything that happens is fate, unfolding out of itself.

His laughter fades into grief. "Why is this happening? Why now? Why like this?"

She smiles at him. "If you already knew everything that's about to happen, it would look like time moving forward. It was look like this. It would be you, in this moment, because you already know."

Their eyes lock. Every realization, every epiphany that he's had, moving forward on the tide, is just another level of acceptance. Maybe it _will_ surprise him in the end, but it's like hearing a sound across the ocean, getting closer. If he could admit what was going to happen…if he knew his fate, consciously, and how it keeps the world turning…who knows what he'd do differently?

"Sometimes it's better to just close your eyes." She moves towards the bars between them silently. He can see the understanding in her eyes. He can see that she's talking about both of them now. Him and her. They were always the same. "This is how change works…all change."

"Then why does it feel like dying?" he whispers, knowing what his words mean to her. He sees something light up behind her eyes. He gets it.

"Because it is."

I guess that's all we'll ever be now, huh?_ Her beautiful face broke__ for a s__econd, just for a second but it wa__s long enough, a__nd then he looked at her, and she smiled. It wa__s like the sun com__ing up, like a fresh breeze. He wa__s tou__ched. This wa__sn't a story about her cracking __up__ it wa__s a story about how he helped her out of a hole, with his faith and his lo__ve and his respect for her. He ga__ve her wings._

Lee opens the hatch after the third knock. The guards look at him stolidly and motion to the small woman standing back, waiting patiently. He never expected to see her here now, but he's not unhappy that she came. He's just…distracted.

She steps inside where they used to live…where they were never happy. He knows that seeing her here will make things better or worse, but he needs to know what she's going to say because he still loves her. He never wanted her to leave, but he always knew one day she would.

"I forgive you." Those were not the words he was expecting to hear.

There is a beat as Lee considers his ex-wife in silence.

"For what?" Maybe he had wronged Dualla too many times to know what exactly is being pardoned.

"I know you loved her. I always knew. Even before the Dance, before the Groundbreaking Ceremony, before she shot you." It's a big admission, but Lee doesn't know what it means. He doesn't know why…why this means anything now.

"I know there's all kinds of love. Whatever form it takes, whether it's hateful sex or lovely sex or marriage or sibling rivalry or simple friendship, you're either in or you're out." Her voice is quivering as she looks at him. "That night, when you fought her, I knew her dog tags would never leave that box."

Lee can't speak. There are no words for what she is saying to him now. No response that would mean anything to either of them. Kara's kind of commitment never had a thing to do with sex, especially after Leoben. That was what Dee always got about Kara, and Lee never did. He was always more concerned with the rules. He needed to draw lines around it, say this kind of dancing but not that kind, these loyalties but not those, this behavior and not that behavior.

Now they both understand. They both know that there's another line around it, the line of salt that tries to accomplish his separation from it. _I missed you._ He chokes on the blood she's already spilled. _I missed you, too._

Lee reaches out and touches her cheek gently. She lets him, leaning into him for a moment. _I still love you._ Then she pulls away, sadness and resolve in her eyes.

"Dee…" he breathes, but can't make himself say anything else.

"I understand now. I thought I did before, but I was wrong." It's her turn to apologize. "Nobody – not even the Admiral's son, my husband, Kara's lover – can know how to walk that line between governance and war, how to be a soldier and a man of the law at the same time. You were hurting and there was no one to tell you who you were…not anymore."

There are tears streaming down her beautiful face.

She reaches up and kisses him sweetly. He can taste the salt of her tears, angry in their pain. After several seconds, she pulls away for the last time.

They look at each other and in that split second Lee knows that it all comes down to choices. What he did and what he didn't do. The only way he could be sure about the lines between himself and everybody else was to draw the circle as wide as possible, and serve it with all the work of his hand. He realized that good is the strength to do what's right, not what's allowed. It's all the pursuit of excellence.

Captain Apollo is dead, shed like a suit at that trial. On the other side of the Admiral, and Joseph, and Kara, and on the other side of Roslin's death and all the apologies, all the love, burning like a door, there's Captain Apollo. He's not Kara, he's not one of the missing Cylons, but there's no difference. It doesn't matter. He's a good man, but there's no such thing as too good, just the wrong angles. He remembers that now.

"So I forgive you." She whispers and turns around, leaving him alone.

_All of a sudden, there it wa__s. __The bogey, speeding across his bow, zipping around him playfull__y and ominously.__ And there she was. The monster that had__ chased him across the stars, teasing, fading from view, taking him down into the heavy atmosphere and up into the sun, naked on a virgin w__orld, under the moon. She stood__ on the bank of the river, bringing l__ife to the shore. Starbuck came__ up alongside…_

She's surprised to see Helo. She thought the Admiral would send someone to torture her, or kill her. Can't forget the anger that had been beneath it all. She had thought that it was going to be Tigh. But she knew now that the Colonel had come to see her on his own, without Adama's knowledge or consent, and everything was different. So why Helo?

He didn't have enough pull to be here without a direct order. She knew how tight the security around this cell would be. When she looked at his face she got her answer. He had been here before. He had married Athena, he had Hera, he was the bridge…he was supposed to be the bridge. Only, she was the bridge now and they both knew it. Helo was irrelevant…but it was still good to see him.

"So, are you really Kara?" Helo's voice was just like she remembered. His eyebrows were raised skeptically, but he was so ready to believe her, believe anything she told him to be true. He loved her so much…or not enough. One or the other. Kara knew which she preferred.

She shrugs in response, as if to say, _You're__ going to have to make up your own mind about that one._ He smiles at her quietly.

Without another word he walks around to the door and opens the latch. He steps into the cell without hesitating and closes the door behind him. The guards don't stop him, and they lock the door once he's inside. She's surprised, she wasn't expecting that.

He walks right up to her and stops when they are only inches apart. He's studying her as if to make sure she's real. Then he reaches out a hand, tentatively, and touches her hair. It brushes her shoulders now, longer than it was when he saw her for the last time.

"Your hair…it's so long now." Helo said softly, looking into her eyes with affection. She grins at him. He knows her, past a single doubt.

She always cut her hair whenever things got too heavy to carry.

He was looking at her, up and down, and she could see his mind trying to reconcile what his eyes were telling him. This was really her, and it wasn't. She had hands, which they took away during the nova and which they kept taking away. She had wings, for which she gave everything, to make her mother happy, to reach a destiny that everybody knew was coming. She had breasts and legs and funny little feet and a sexy voice and a ready smile and a lovely mouth. She had eyes that could always see the weak places and a tactical mind and a quick wit and a burning fire inside that kept her moving forward faster than anybody could keep up.

She faced things. She opened doors with her hands, and when that didn't work she used her feet. She was Admiral Cain and everyone was safer with her than they ever could be without. She fought until she couldn't. She fought until she didn't have to.

Was she still that person?

She slides her arms up around his neck and holds onto him tightly. She can feel the tears burning at her eyes. _Crying?_ Each person she sees, the calm façade slips a little bit more. The connections are no longer severed, and she can feel them all within her again.

She lets go before he does, pushing herself away gently. His face is completely open in its happiness.

"Why are you here, Karl?" she asks him. Her voice isn't harsh, it makes the question sound innocent. Still, they both know the truth. He's not here to see her. He's here for a reason.

"I'm supposed to take you to Colonial One." He tells her truthfully, the light in his eyes fades a little. He wishes that it was different. All of it. She knows why it can't be.

"Why you?" She wants to know. She can already guess the answer.

"The Admiral trusts me, I guess." He shrugs.

She lets his words wash over her. A thousand thoughts flitter through her head. The Admiral didn't ask Tigh. The Admiral didn't ask Lee. The Admiral didn't ask Sharon or Gaeta or Dualla or Kelly. _What happened here?_ She shudders at the thought of the home she has returned to.

_It wa__s __like the flame of a candle that had been blown out. It wa__s like just one star, burning, like a storm, from an angle he couldn't ever see before. __It wa__s like her eyes, looking at him with more love than ever before, fix__ed but not unbroken. Her Viper wa__s cle__an and fresh and new. Her grin wa__s full of love and wisdom, just as in life. Never innocent, never guilty; the dawn breaking…again…_

"How did you get here?" Roslin asks her.

They are alone now – Roslin, Adama, and her – she is shackled to a chair, her expression is completely blank. They're watching her like she's a dangerous animal, like she would like nothing more than to kill them both, that the metal holding her means anything at all. She _is_ dangerous…but not to them. Never to them.

"I was always here." She replies, the obvious fault in the statement so blatant that it gives them both pause.

"You died." The Admiral states, somewhat blandly. He stops himself before he says her name. It's not her. That would be impossible.

"My death wasn't important. The only thing that really matters is that I'm not dead now." She tells him. She's not trying to be evasive, she's telling him what she knows to be true. It's up in the air whether he'll believe her or not.

"You believe you're fulfilling some kind of destiny?" Roslin asks. She tries to keep the skepticism out of her voice. Kara looks over at her.

"Every moment we get closer and closer to the truth." She replies.

"What truth?" The President doesn't move forward, but her eyes sharpen onto Kara's face, focusing in.

Kara looks at her for a moment. She wonders if the President can understand what this means. She begs her with her eyes. _Remember the faith I put in you once? Do you have any idea what happened to me on __Caprica__? I went back there for you._ Only it's not about that, it's not about getting even. She knows that now. Roslin was just an instrument, same as she was.

She glances between both of them, "Why won't you believe me?" she can't keep the pleading out of her voice, but there is a note of harsh reality that she can't remove. She wonders if they notice how afraid she is now, now that she's back. "_I saw Earth_."

The Admiral and the President look at each other. She can see the doubt creeping in, taking over.

"And you want to lead us?" Roslin turns back to her, and she can see it now. She's the Dying Leader, or Roslin is. They both are and it doesn't matter how it happens, only that it does. She knows that Laura can't see it now.

"Change _is_ dying." Kara states bluntly, echoing her words to Tigh. Will they see it as clearly as he could? Can they understand it as fully as a Cylon? Do they know yet?

_Their eyes we__re __locked,__ her wo__rds still fresh in his mind. It was suddenly clear. She was the view he had__ to keep now, like his father, like __Roslin__. The nature of life __is obsession, all untwisting in that moment. All those wrong turns we__re suddenly wrenching straight. All those mistakes not mistakes, but just the way things had to go…_

"Please, Helo. Just let me talk to her for a second. I'll never be able to get anywhere near her cell…please…" Sam can't take his eyes off of her, standing there so close and so real.

She's watching him carefully, her eyes filling with affection and something like anticipation. They're in the hall of the dead, where Sam cornered them on the way back to her cell.

"Okay, Sam." Helo nods. He turns back to look at Kara behind him for a moment, then walks away. He's going to keep watch, but he was also giving them their privacy.

They stand in silence for a moment, not moving in any direction. She can feel the emotion building within her, stronger and stronger. They don't move to touch each other. It's not the same as it was with Lee, he hadn't seen her die, he hadn't know the truth. What they feel is beyond the need for contact, they need something much more than that. They need to _see_ each other.

She looks over his shoulder and notices her own face smiling back at her from the wall next to Kat. She had his promise that she would go up there, and he had kept his word. Sam glances at the wall that she's looking at, correctly reading the expression on her face.

Weakening momentarily at the thought of her own death, she sits on the large crate at her back. She isn't sure how much more of this she can take. Her eyes meet Sam's again. What is _he_ going to say to her?

"I saw Lee put that up." He tells her gently, meaning the picture. "He was…when he saw me he pretended he was being strong but…it was in his eyes the whole time." He smiles at her for a moment.

She looks at the picture. She can see it as clearly as if it was happening. She imagines Lee standing there, unable to pin her to wall, wrestling with himself. She imagines him hearing Sam enter, pretending that it meant nothing, because she would have done the same thing…she _had_ done the same thing when it had been Zak, when she had to face Lee for the first time after his death.

Was it appropriate to be grieving? Was it too much, or too little? There weren't any rules, not with that much history behind it. What if Lee knew the rules of grieving better? What if he shouldn't see her like that? Or maybe he could tell her how to do it. Maybe he could tell her who she was, who to be now that Zak was gone. Take away the plan and they both, Lee and herself, fell apart.

She nods, but doesn't say anything.

"There was one night, when I was drunk, and Lee had to come and drag me off your Viper." Sam smiles mirthlessly. His eyes are painful with the memory. Her stomach lurches a little. Lee had saved Sam, saved him like he used to save her, on the bad nights when she got like that. "It wasn't until I looked at him that night, the pain in him, that I knew you were really gone."

She understands what he's saying, and what he won't say. Lee and Sam had been the only ones to really know what her death meant. They understood, better than anyone, how a preposition can turn on you, how many places a word like "gone" could describe.

"I'm sorry for the pain you felt." She whispers. It's all she can give him. She can't apologize for leaving, because it's one thing she will never regret.

"It wasn't your fault, Kara." Sam tells her, looking deeply into her eyes now. "It was part of your destiny."

There's something in the way he says it that catches her attention. Something about the way he sounds now, he had never sounded like that before. There's something new. Something that had always been there…just below the surface. She hadn't known what it was until now.

"You're a Cylon." She tells him, going numb with shock.

He blinks up at her in surprise. "So are you."

She feels herself break. She drops her head into her hands, gripping her hair tightly in her fingers. _Oh gods, Sam._ She shakes her head faintly.

"Kara, look at me." He says, lifting her chin with a gentle finger so that his eyes are looking straight through hers. "If you're a Cylon, then you've been one from the beginning."

"The beginning of _what_, Sam?" she pleads with him gently to tell her. When she had come back, everything was so sure, everything clear. Now it was all going to shit. Again. Everything she was, everything she needed to be, it was falling down around her. It was this ship.

He grins at her slightly, faltering. "I was hoping you could tell me."

_He said__ her name, his eyes wide. _Don't freak out._ She wa__s __laughing at him, just like she had__ always been laughing at him. _It really is me._ He wa__s afraid to say anything, afraid to break the spell._ It's gonna be okay._ Her voice wa__s soft, like the dawn waking you gently._ I've been to Earth. I know where it is. And I'm gonna take us there. _The Dying Leader…_

The floor is hard against her back. She shifts slightly, trying to get comfortable and knowing it's impossible. She glances over at the small cot that's in the corner. She prefers to feel the cold of the metal against her, prefers to feel the ship moving beneath her body. The hatch creaks open and closes quickly, and she can hear footsteps approaching. She doesn't move for several seconds. When she finally turns her head to look at who's come to see her, she finds that she already knew.

Blinking at her from the other side of the glass he's everything she could ever want him to be…in the worst possible way. His blue eyes waiting, full of pain and hope. How did he manage to get past the guards and in to see her? As soon as she thinks it, she knows it's a stupid question. They're Starbuck and Apollo. Nothing gets in the way of that. Not even the rules.

He isn't wearing a uniform. She looks at her own clothes, thinking about how she should be the one who isn't in the uniform. It's all she has but it's a lie now. Both of them, neither of them, has any reason to keep hiding who they were behind who they should be. That's gone. She wonders if he regrets losing it.

"Was this how it felt? When Zak died?" he asks her suddenly. He looks like he had wanted to say something else, but stopped himself.

She looks at him, and doesn't respond. She doesn't smile sadly or nod or whisper an answer that would help him understand. Zak knew he wasn't ready to fly, but Kara put him up there anyway. Kara knew she wasn't ready to fly, but Lee put her up there anyway. There's no use in feeling sorry about either one, because they had happened. They happened just as they were supposed to happen.

Finally she asks the question, "What happened here?"

He looks at her, surprised slightly. He doesn't try to look like he has no idea what she's talking about, or like he doesn't want to answer. Maybe he's surprised that she noticed at all, noticed him standing there in front of her in unrecognizable civilian clothing, a different person than he had been when she had left him. He shouldn't be surprised. There are some things he's forgotten to take for granted. The fact that she _kn__ows_ him is one of those things.

And then he says something that shocks her beyond belief, because they are the words she's thinking to herself. "I left him, Kara." His voice is a whisper.

"Why?" she asks, not showing how terrified she is. She's not supposed to get scared anymore.

"I couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't be who he wanted me to be when it…it wasn't who I _was_." He's looking at her now and she knows what he's really saying. _I left him because of you._ There was always that difference in the way they had loved her. When she died they were incapable of seeing over the walls of their own grief to comfort the other, to understand and help each other heal. All of this has happened before and all of it will happen again. He had betrayed his father, left him, he had lost everything. Somehow he had found his way back. There was no going back for Lee anymore, this was who he was.

She isn't sure how long they were silent for. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, or days, a thousand years. It doesn't really matter because eventually he asks the inevitable question, the one she has been waiting for.

"What happened to you?"

He is very close to the glass now. She lifts herself off the floor slowly and walks over to him. They're inches away, the smooth glass and wire the only thing that separates them. Her eyes meet his and hold them, unwilling to let them go for even a second.

"I found it." She shrugs, wondering if he will be able to see what lies beneath her words.

"What does that _mean_?" He asks her, needing the answer. She can see him struggling, needing to reach out and touch her. But he needs his answers, and she's determined to give him whatever answers he needs. She owes him that, for everything he has given her.

"What?" She wants him to clarify.

"We can't make them believe you." He tells her bluntly. There's no need to explain who he's talking about. She can see the defeat within her. He believes in her so completely. The futility of her battle is already weighing on him. "Can't make them follow you."

"That's true." She nods, with a slight grin. It's more for his comfort, but she draws some comfort out of hearing it as well. "We _can't_ make them…but we don't have to make them."

She sees something soften in his eyes when he hears her say "we". Sees something lift from off his shoulders in knowing that they were together again. _I guess you're stuck with me until the end._ She hadn't lied to him, she never lied to him. Not about anything but the two of them, and as much as she wanted it to, this had nothing to do with the two of them.

He glances around to see the guards, staring blankly at him from the hatch. They act like he's not even there, like they can't see him. He's not allowed to be here. He's not allowed, and yet they won't stop him. He's Adama's son and that still means something. Probably not enough, but they also know that he would kill anyone who got in his way. No more Lee without Kara. No more Apollo without Starbuck.

Without waiting for permission he mirrors Helo's movements earlier and opens the door to the brig without pausing. The guards lock the door behind him, just as they did with Helo, and she wonders if maybe the Admiral didn't have a hand in this. Surely he must know.

They stand looking at each other for several seconds and she thinks maybe both of them will never move again. Before she can begin to wonder how long she can stand not touching him, he's there suddenly, his mouth crushed against hers in violent desperation.

She can feel him and he's different. But then, so is she. Despite that unrelenting fact, he feels the same as he always has. His skin belongs on hers, and every inch of her screams to be closer to him. Her arms wrap themselves around his neck, as if she's clinging to him for her life. The life that she needs now. It feels like the exuberance of their first kiss, the desperation of their next, the sweetness, the passion, the anger, the pain, the lust. It's all there. All the love, burning like a door, from an angle they couldn't see before.

When her mouth finally draws a breath away from his, they are still clinging to each other, arms clasped tightly to keep the other from letting go. They don't, either of them, try to pull away. She breathes into his shoulder, feeling his own breath hot on her back. He's shaking, but so is she.

"What will happen when we get there?" He whispers at her softly, his voice raspy and nervous. She wants to see his eyes, she wants to know what he's really asking, but she can't make herself surrender the solid of his chest against hers.

"It will all be over." She replies, tightening her hold on him for a moment. _Not us._ She wonders if he understands what she's saying. Only she knows it's a lie, all of it. They will never make it, the two of them. It wasn't in them to make it. In this moment, though, she could believe it was possible.

"Over?" his voice is curious. He can hear the quiver in her voice, she's sure of it.

"Yes." She nods against him. She takes a deep breath and pulls away. His eyes meet hers, all softness and strength and contentment. She knows in that moment that she had to crush him now, and it kills her. "The end of the human race."

_In the moment of opening the doo__r, in the moment before he came__ to life ag__ain, in the moment before he could__ finally breathe, in the moment before s__he led__ him out__ of the storm, Kara Thrace came__ up alongside Lee __Adama__ in the sky, and smiled__ perfectly. _Hi, Lee._ She said, and danced__ back from the abyss again._


	2. AN

I wrote this disclaimer to go along with the story and forgot to post it. This story is entirely based on ideas put forward on TWoP. If any interest you as much as they interested me, I'd contact Jacob with compliments. I just wanted to put them in a context. Everything else comes from the season 4 trailer. Really, I own none of the words in this story. It was an experiment. No plagerism or badness is intended. Review if you wish, but the people you want are Jacob and Ron Moore.


End file.
